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Airbnb removed my negative review

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Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#451

Post by dmix »

jiveturkey wrote: post #389
dmix wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, you think AirBnB should pay random people as employees to let them host short-term stays in their house? And this will help make AirBnB's moderation of reviews more honest?

the idea of a secret shopper is common. i suspect abnb already does this. obviously they get extremely limited coverage if they do so

No reason AirBnB can't invest in improving their average host quality if they invested in it. Consumers just need to push back publicly.

These sorts of HN posts is often how change happens.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#452

Post by namlem »

waboremo wrote: post #273
irjustin wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, gamifcation of reviews is a very real problem. There's no good answer to this. Anyone that allows/relies on direct consumer feedback is at risk for one of the hardest problems that exist. Personally, I want to know people's great and real experiences, or terrible ones, who wouldn't!? But, once you tie it to money, it's over.

It is a problem, but it's also partially self-inflicted. Compare reviews on Steam to reviews on Airbnb. You'll quickly notice something, Steam shows you far more information at a glance. You get to know whether someone bought the game themselves or if it was given free to them, how many hours they played before the review, how many hours they played in total, their rating, how other people feel about that review, how…

Steam Reviews really should be a model for everyone else imo. They still have problems such as review bombing, but they are way better than anything else.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#454

Post by zbrozek »

miguelazo wrote: post #447
zbrozek wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is short O(10M) housing units[0], primarily due to anti-construction policies. Airbnb has O(100k) listings[1] in the US. Banning short-term rentals is a 1% solution. That's a policy distraction, not a useful lever to pull. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing... [1] https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/

There are plenty of empty luxury condos in every major city. They mostly serve as bank accounts for foreign investors. There's plenty of construction, just the wrong type.

Maybe so, but can you show any data that it's a significant or meaningful problem and not a visible scapegoat? The data I found (above) makes clear that deleting the short-term rental market would not even dent the housing shortage problem in the United States.

I could believe (and maybe someone in this thread has data!) that in some extremely over-constrained markets that units are disproportionately used for short-term rentals. But I haven't seen any numbers. And in those cases, you still should be building homes to solve the root cause problem.

Americans persistently seem to want to find any reason at all to absolve themselves of responsibility for the housing crisis. It's investors! It's short-term rentals! It's corporate landlords! But it's never the locals who oppose construction.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#455

Post by Scea91 »

marssaxman wrote: post #425
hackernewds wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're guilty of what you're accusing the responder with. The exorbitance of a $200+ cleaning fee is a well-known criticism of Airbnb. And no, not until recently could you see the actual total prior to sunken cost of Reviewing your booking. That too, Airbnb finally implemented once the Biden administration compelled them by law - that is, not before making much fanfare about it with the pretense of them "doin…

> The exorbitance of a $200+ cleaning fee is a well-known criticism of Airbnb. People criticize all sorts of things they don't understand. Our cleaning service charges us $280 per turnover. Separating the cleaning fee from the nightly rate makes our property more appealing for longer stays, which we (and our neighbors) prefer. It's not like a hotel, where the cleaners come every day; why should guests pay every night…

As long as its transparent and included in the per-night price calculation so I can easily compare multiple properties I do not have an issue with any fee regardless of its name.

People are annoyed because these fees are often sneaky or not apparent at first sight which makes the UX annoying.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#456

Post by gaadd33 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #195
gaadd33 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People owning fractional buildings" has existed for almost 150 years, at what point should we start to see NYC buildings collapsing due to structural collapse?

This is false. The first condominium in the continental US was built in 1960, the entire scheme is only 63 years old. There's some older buildings that have been converted, sure, but the legal concept isn't that old. And buildings start needing more significant structural work after forty or fifty years. Which is to say, yes, I expect many more condos to collapse over the next couple decades.

Given the extremely similar structure in operation (residents are elected to the board, control maintenance fees, etc) and that insurance companies consider them the same for insuring purposes, what makes condos significantly worse than co-ops (which have been around for ~150 years)?

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#457

Post by tekknik »

zbrozek wrote: post #454
miguelazo wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of empty luxury condos in every major city. They mostly serve as bank accounts for foreign investors. There's plenty of construction, just the wrong type.

Maybe so, but can you show any data that it's a significant or meaningful problem and not a visible scapegoat? The data I found (above) makes clear that deleting the short-term rental market would not even dent the housing shortage problem in the United States. I could believe (and maybe someone in this thread has data!) that in some extremely over-constrained markets that units are disproportionately used for short-…

Adding more houses to the market certainly will decrease pricing pressure. Nobody said banning Airbnb was suddenly going to make housing affordable but decrease prices.

And my question remains, which is more valuable to society, short term rentals or homes?

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#458

Post by tekknik »

dragonwriter wrote: post #433
tekknik wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then how do you make people care enough to do a good job if there is no monetary incentive? Should the employer cover this? That’ll will still end with the same, increased prices. Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure. People don’t like surprise fees, inflated prices, etc. They don’t mind tipping as it gives them some control back. My job also “tips” me. Every year if my manager like…

> So then how do you make people care enough to do a good job if there is no monetary incentive? Should the employer cover this? That’ll will still end with the same, increased prices. Increased prices are what it should be, just as it is in every business outside of tipping culture. Tipping culture is not the same thing as increased prices. > Also this has been tried before, and was widely considered a failure. It w…

> Increased prices are what it should be, just as it is in every business outside of tipping culture. Tipping culture is not the same thing as increased prices.

The market said no.

> It works just fine in much of the world. It even works fine in the US where foe some things normally covered by tipping culture, a flat fee in lieu of gratuity is applied in certain circunstances (e.g., restaurants do this with largw parties quite often.) It works just fine in places with tipping culture in all the customer service jobs that are arbitrarily outside of its coverage.

That’s great, but it didn’t work in the US. Some of the larger corps ran the experiment for 4 years and when the waiters lost income they complained. You see, here tipping culture means they make more money.

> Incentive pay from your empkoyer is not a culture of tips from your employer’s customers.

It’s exactly the same. It’s lay I would not have received otherwise.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#459

Post by tekknik »

mrexroad wrote: post #448
spoils19 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct stance to take. I've been to other countries where tipping hasn't been implemented, and the service and quality has _always_ been worse than in the grand USA.

You mean like in Japan? > hasn’t been implemented I’m not going to evangelize what a correct stance on this is, but IMHO tipping is a big, not a feature.

I’ve actually been to Japan, I’m not sure how their service is substantially better than the US. the restaurants I went to you order from a kiosk and get the food yourself. There really is no service to tip for. One restaurant I went to was a mom and pop and there was some service there as they struggled to find forks for us. We tried to tip and they counter tipped and gave us the small beer glasses we were drinking out of.

Re: Airbnb removed my negative review

#460

Post by GFischer »

nerdbert wrote: post #394
luciusdomitius wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the hotels, who charge it, but governments, most often the municipality. Usually there is no obligation to hide that from the guest or include it in the price. Just to pay. You can also go pay it straight in the town hall, the hotel is just doing you a favor.

A resort fee is not the same as a tourism tax. Tourism taxes are per head, per night and generally Airbnbs are required to charge them as well (though they often don't). A resort fee is a bogus surcharge added by hotels to "cover" advertised amenities, like if a cinema charged you a Dolby Surround fee after you showed your ticket at the entrance.

Anecdotal evidence, I have paid tourism taxes on both hotels and AirBnBs.
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